24/07/09 - Hailing the designation of Enrico Giovannini, OECD’s Chief Statistician since January 2001, as President of the Italian national statistics institute (Istituto nazionale di statistica - ISTAT), OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said this marks recognition of his prominent role in the field of international statistics and his contribution to strengthening the OECD’s position in this area.

"On behalf of the OECD, I wish to express my most sincere appreciation and satisfaction at the designation of Enrico Giovannini, until now Chief Statistician of the OECD, to the prestigious post of the head of ISTAT,” Mr. Gurría said in a statement.

“Mr. Giovannini has provided very distinguished service at the OECD. His designation to the presidency of ISTAT announced today by the Italian government is an acknowledgement, not only of the recognition that he enjoys within Italy’s public administration, but also of his work to enhance the OECD’s role as a provider of relevant, reliable and comparable statistics and its leading position in international efforts to develop the use of statistics to measure and foster progress in our societies. We wish him well and look forward to continuing to work with him to improve the functioning of the global economy and the well-being of people."

During his tenure at the OECD, Mr. Giovannini designed and implemented a new OECD statistics strategy. He also played the lead role in establishing the Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies, run in collaboration with other international and regional partners and hosted by the OECD. As part of this project, the 3rd OECD World Forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy”, to be held Busan, Korea on 27-30 October 2009, will bring together politicians and policy makers, opinion leaders, Nobel laureates, statisticians, academics, journalists and representatives of civil society from over 130 countries to discuss progress and how to measure and foster it.